Friday, December 18, 2009

The show at L'Keg with Guppies, Lost Lake and Manhattan Murder Mystery was great. We enjoyed playing with these bands of people who happen to be really great friends of ours...and we really enjoyed our set which Matt said reminded him of a score for a John Carpenter movie.

Tonite will be our friend Adam Roth's birthday and he is celebrating it at Casa De Health Club!And we play with Andrew Fucking Felix, Fucking Voice On Tape and of course, The Fucking Health Club!

Whew!

Also, if you haven't RSVP'd to the LA RECORD Party on Saturday yet, now is the time!

We will be playing at the Echo Curio that night for the UBS Nite but do go afterwards because it will be fun and they have lots of cool going down!!!

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Last night was fun playing with the HM157 Church Of Fashion despite the show starting really late -but we sure felt the holidays caress us with its mangy hands...Tonite we'll be playing with friends and lovers at L'Keg. Awwww!

Monday, December 14, 2009

Monday, November 30, 2009

It was quite an experience to see Terry Riley play a collab set with Kronos Quartet, Matmos and Andy Schlessinger. I dont think a lot of people knew what to make of the whole Eureka! experience with all these four artists playing together but we surely had a blast watching people slowly walk out from the music hall.

On Saturday, November 27th was the LAST SHOW EVER at The Prestigious House Of Vermont. Magick Orchids played with The Girl With Violent Arms, Melted Cassettes, Voice On Tape, Michael Nhat and Slumber Beast. It was a fun crazy night with dancing and of course, coppers! But hell! A Vermont House show is still a party even if its the LAST PARTY there! Thanks to all our beautiful people there who has been making shit happen and letting us be part of all this...Scotty, Dustin, Josh, Isaac and to everyone else who has lived there and all the amazing bodies, heads and faces that has ever graced the place. Im sure they'll be making lots of shit happen in all the directions they will all take in their lives. Don't quote us on this but we know...yes we do...that the The Vermont House spirit will live on in EVERY house show that will be sprouting out all over Los Angeles in the years to come. So watch out, kiddos! The End of An Era Also Means The Start of A New One!

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Sunday, November 15, 2009

I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.

I believe in my own obsessions, in the beauty of the car crash, in the peace of the submerged forest, in the excitements of the deserted holiday beach, in the elegance of automobile graveyards, in the mystery of multi-storey car parks, in the poetry of abandoned hotels.

I believe in the forgotten runways of Wake Island, pointing towards the Pacifics of our imaginations.

I believe in the mysterious beauty of Margaret Thatcher, in the arch of her nostrils and the sheen on her lower lip; in the melancholy of wounded Argentine conscripts; in the haunted smiles of filling station personnel; in my dream of Margaret Thatcher caressed by that young Argentine soldier in a forgotten motel watched by a tubercular filling station attendant.

I believe in the beauty of all women, in the treachery of their imaginations, so close to my heart; in the junction of their disenchanted bodies with the enchanted chromium rails of supermarket counters; in their warm tolerance of my perversions.

I believe in the death of tomorrow, in the exhaustion of time, in our search for a new time within the smiles of auto-route waitresses and the tired eyes of air-traffic controllers at out-of-season airports.

I believe in the genital organs of great men and women, in the body postures of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Princess Di, in the sweet odours emanating from their lips as they regard the cameras of the entire world.

I believe in madness, in the truth of the inexplicable, in the common sense of stones, in the lunacy of flowers, in the disease stored up for the human race by the Apollo astronauts.

I believe in the impossibility of existence, in the humour of mountains, in the absurdity of electromagnetism, in the farce of geometry, in the cruelty of arithmetic, in the murderous intent of logic.

I believe in adolescent women, in their corruption by their own leg stances, in the purity of their dishevelled bodies, in the traces of their pudenda left in the bathrooms of shabby motels.

I believe in flight, in the beauty of the wing, and in the beauty of everything that has ever flown, in the stone thrown by a small child that carries with it the wisdom of statesmen and midwives.

I believe in the gentleness of the surgeon's knife, in the limitless geometry of the cinema screen, in the hidden universe within supermarkets, in the loneliness of the sun, in the garrulousness of planets, in the repetitiveness or ourselves, in the inexistence of the universe and the boredom of the atom.

I believe in the light cast by video-recorders in department store windows, in the messianic insights of the radiator grilles of showroom automobiles, in the elegance of the oil stains on the engine nacelles of 747s parked on airport tarmacs.

I believe in the non-existence of the past, in the death of the future, and the infinite possibilities of the present.

I believe in the derangement of the senses: in Rimbaud, William Burroughs, Huysmans, Genet, Celine, Swift, Defoe, Carroll, Coleridge, Kafka.

I believe in the designers of the Pyramids, the Empire State Building, the Berlin Fuehrerbunker, the Wake Island runways.

I believe in the body odours of Princess Di.

I believe in the next five minutes.

I believe in the history of my feet.

I believe in migraines, the boredom of afternoons, the fear of calendars, the treachery of clocks.

I believe in anxiety, psychosis and despair.

I believe in the perversions, in the infatuations with trees, princesses, prime ministers, derelict filling stations (more beautiful than the Taj Mahal), clouds and birds.

I believe in the death of the emotions and the triumph of the imagination.

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Thursday, November 5, 2009

This upcoming Friday, November 6 -we are playing at the closing of this installation art show at T.O.W. in Downton Los Angeles. You should come and check it out and support the space. This is a fundraiser so its $5 to get in. This one is really cool there will be home-brewed beer and live screen-printing and we really suggest you go check it out, especially the big mammoth made entirely from busted tires. magick orchids will be playing first at 9:30ish. Also check out the bathroom mural that Champ did. Coolness!

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Great show last night at Que Sera in Long Beach with amazingly great bands: Swing Hailey, Family Tree Analog and Guppies! Though we got home at almost 3AM in the morning it was totally worth every sonic moment.

Anyways, here is a recording of the awesome split set that we did with The Littlest Viking last weekend at The Artshole in UCSB. Recorded by Maxwell Lewis? of The Artshole Collective. We really had so much fun playing this show. Yo will also hear the critical neighbor who was trying to be douche about the music. LISTEN AND ENJOY!

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Friday, October 23, 2009

Tonight we will be returning to Santa Barbara to play at The Artshole with the badass motherfucking duo of Ruben and Chris otherwise known as The Littlest Viking. Not sure who else is on the bill. Not sure of anything really.

Tomorrow night we are playing at the L'KEG Gallery with our homeslices from Irvine, Tan Dollar and Wonder Wheel and Jean Wilder and Concett 9 -all of which are badass motherfuckers too in their own right.

Happening at the same night at The House of Vermont is also Michael Nhat's record release which also has a great line-up of artists like Halloween Swim Team, Narwhal Party, Voice On Tape, Luna Is Honey, Blue Tape/Red Tape and Redeemer from Chicago. This will be an intense night. There are choices to make and brains to bake.

Now, just imagine how great would it be if all the people that go the The Vermont House met up with all the people that will go to L'KEG halfway through Figueroa and say, 3rd and do a dance battle to a Michael Nhat song stopping all of traffic. All the motorists will all later come out from their cars and join in on the dance battle that ends up becoming a dancefest and it all gets crazy and euphoric and everyone takes off all their clothes and starts fucking each other like wild animals, sweat and spit all over their bodies, then everyone explodes in one big collective earth-shaking orgasm and pass-out then everyone wakes up to a beautiful Sunday morning full of life. Whew!

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Hey kiddos! Check out Magick Orchids' performance at Frank Moore's Shaman's Den that we did at the beginningof our Northwest Tour last August. They just archived the performance at the links posted below. Just don't mind itif we sound like such dorks -we are never good with these interview chu-chus but we always do our best. This was trulya great experience! We will also be releasing a CD of these recordings with Frank Moore playing piano/vox, before theend of the year. We are calling it "THE SEA ABOVE AND THE SKY BELOW" with cover art made by Michael Labashwho does a lot of art for Frank. Also if you have time, do check out most of the archived stuff at LUVER. They havelots of interesting shit that can titillate your senses!

Monday, October 19, 2009

Monday, October 12, 2009

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Alright, kids...here's a really good read on improvising for many who still think that improvising is just like 'jamming' -it would be best to try and gain some knowledge about it if you feel its something you want to devote some of your precious time with..will ya? That way, we can work it out TOGETHER! Words! Words! Words!

APPROACHES TO IMPROVISATIONby Markos Zografos (February 2007)

(This is a transcript of a lecture presented at the Keys National Piano Competition,Brisbane Convention Centre, Australia, 17 October, 2004)

1. Introduction

I'm going to be discussing improvisation and the various ways it can be approached. Some improvisational techniques will be briefly explored from the point of ideas and thoughts about how we can organise music.

This breakdown of a current understanding of improvisation will either be very obvious to someone sitting in a seat here, or it may be something completely foreign to someone accustomed to systematised ways of learning music. Essentially, we're talking about creating music within the limits of sound rather than limits of different ways we write down and understand musical structures and systems of thought in playing someone else's composition.

Though an overview of improvisational techniques, it will be no different to an overview of compositional techniques, as at the level of ideas, improvisation and composition are the same thing. The best definition that I've so far heard of improvisation is that it is "spontaneous composition."

So there's the difference between the two--improvisation is a spontaneous act, composition is a planned act. There is intermingling and all sorts of degrees between them, but we'll be talking about approaching this spontaneity, and different ways we may prepare for such a thing. It is thus similar to written composition; the difference being where the writing composer prepares a work by planning it, the improviser doesn't plan, but can prepare for the spontaneous act through various methods that I'll be discussing.

I am going to refer to the article "Elements of Improvisation" written by pianist Marilyn Crispell as a springboard to commentate upon, as she has given a concise and direct overview of the span of compositional techniques. For those of you that don't know, Marilyn Crispell is an active pianist working in America who combines improvisation with written composition and performs solo, and in various ensembles.

After going through these elements, I'll move onto a discussion about the "spontaneous" part of the improvising act, talking about some ideas on energy flow, timing, and degrees of control--issues to do with the moment of acting out an improvisation.

So it's a very simple topic. It falls into two parts: The first part will deal with materials, matter--the preparatory side of improvisation where you build up your base of musical "availabilities," your attributes; and in the second part we will get into some aspects of movement and energy--the action side of improvising, where you put your material into real-time flow.

So even though this is a talk about improvisation, here we do not make any separation between performance, composition, and improvisation. We just use the word "improvisation" to discuss these three as a single practical phenomenon

2. Elements of Improvisation

I'll now refer to Marilyn Crispell's article "Elements of Improvisation" (which can be found in the John Zorn edited book Arcana) because:

it outlines the variety of ways a musical composition can be constructed and developed,

and it does not refer to any specific kind of musical language, but it details what forms the base of anything that we can call "music."

The techniques outlined should be fundamental to any composer's understanding of musical workability, and I'd like to think that everybody who calls themselves "a musician" holds this basic understanding of how music can be constructed.

(I have added numeric points to statements in this article for points of reference to this discussion.)

Elements of composition:

1. The use of rhythmic, melodic and harmonic elements and motives (two or more elements joined together to form a logical whole) in the development of an improvisation/composition

(Improvisation as spontaneous composition)

Adding together motives (as moveable ‘blocks', or permutations) to form compositions

A very simple yet broad statement, and one that stands as a foundation of all music and musical styles. Ask yourself:

"What level of interest do I have in rhythm?""What level of interest do I have in melody?""What level of interest do I have in harmony?"

"What piece/s of music (it could be either a single work or an entire style)

adhere to this interest in rhythm?

... in melody?... in harmony?"

From these questions, there will arise in you a general partitioning of interest between the three elements. You can say: "from analysing my musical interests I have found that I seem to have more of an interest in rhythm than melody or harmony"...

and you go on...

"Why do I have more of an interest in rhythm than melody or harmony?"

...and you can come up with all sorts of answers.

The most important thing in this self-inquiry is to try to be as honest as possible. This is somewhat achieved by tracing your own personal experience to these elements; and this doesn't at all refer to only looking at technical musical issues. For example, "I like the sound of this percussion instrument because it reminds me of when it used to storm on the roof where I lived on Barry Street," etc.

So you list those things that form your personal interest...it may look something like this:

This forms your "disposal" of personal attributes that you have the ability to use, your uniqueness. I say "disposal" because, for the sake of originality, it is an aim to have no clearly defined piece of information in your memory storage to reference. That is, if you are aiming toward your own style you do not want to simply riff out other people's styles. If you are not seeking originality then this is not so important. So at your disposal is your "junk heap" of musical information; a mud of experiences and imagination-entwined fodder.

Your disposal is something that will always reference your musical personality, so being as honestly aware of it as possible allows you to delve into certain areas more than others, to practice elements and build up this uniqueness however you desire.

This means, for example, that you don't necessarily have to only do physical practice at the instrument; it could be an analysis, for example, of the ways in which "Johnson" uses rhythm and adds together motives in his Symphony number whatever; or it could be just listening to the general feel of a few pieces in a row then trying to keep that same wavelength going—(this is an exercise which can be worked on by following a four-bar phrase in a given style by four of your own bars continuing it...demonstration on the piano)—either on your instrument or in your head; it could be imagining other instruments or people playing them (demonstration of Petar Gocic's saxophone playing)... all kinds of things.

The most important thing is to experiment. Try a lot of different approaches always with the focus of what you want to achieve out of it. For example, a short snappy rhythmic piece; a piece which expresses the mood of a particular scene in a film—after all, this is how my grandmother and others improvised in theaters in the days of silent movies: galloping rhythms when the hero rode to the heroines rescue, dreamy music as they kissed, wild as a fight was going on, etc. These are all good exercises-- they can be just fifteen seconds each.

This is the only way to keep in line with your potential, otherwise you stroll behind it. Improvisation has a very close link with experimentation and the expansion of musical vocabulary purely for the fact that its momentary exposition allows an opening for all sorts of unexpected avenues. So the more you experiment, the more pathways open up for you that you would never have expected otherwise.

2. Beginning with an interval (the most primal musical relationship), rhythmic figure, harmonic block (a ‘block' of harmony in and of itself, not necessarily related to traditional harmonic function within the major/minor tonality system—harmony used for purity of sound (i), or any combination of these, and transposing them (ii), adding imitative/continuous elements, or contrasting elements.

(i) relating to "harmonic block (a ‘block' of harmony in and of itself, not necessarily related to traditional harmonic function within the major/minor tonality system--harmony used for purity of sound)."

What Crispell is talking about here is a vision of harmony, not from traditional systems that we may all be used to, that differentiate consonance and dissonance, but harmony from a point of view aiming to perceive continuity in sound, rather than the expected musical outcome.

So what is harmony? Harmony is things put together that work, operating cooperatively, in balance. Notions such as consonance and dissonance are relative and non-existent outside systems that make claim to them, that is, subject to the one's perception. Harmony is achieved at the level of a sound-based musical approach by operating upon a common level of energy fluctuation--nothing else is needed. I will discuss this in a bit more detail later on.

This comment begins to delve into what will be your second material disposal: the "how do I combine what is in my first disposal to form a developed structure?" disposal.

Once again, the question "what do I like?" arises:

"I like the way Stravinsky's Rite of Spring has a driving rhythmic intensity and how it builds up to these big climaxes. I also like the way I feel this kind of intensity in a lot of pop music--metal, hip hop, electronic stuff--but I prefer the way Stravinsky is able to fuse these elements this way rather than sticking to a repetitive motivic structure that the pop musics follow. I prefer the developmental method, continuous change rather than abrupt/contrasting change, so I am going to see how I can mix the kinds of rhythms I like with this kind of development"

...and from this decision come the experiments...study a score you like, listen to separate elements analytically, aural analysis, always listening to take what you learn into the practical context. Try out different methods... Do they work? Don't they? Why does it/doesn't it work?

"Eh, it sounds too much like I'm just trying to sound like Stravinsky..."

So once it's worked over to a point where you feel you want to move on, forget about it and move onto something else. The process here is that you research musical availabilities and test the results in a practical fashion, like a musical scientist. The more this process happens in the more varieties of ways, and depending upon the level of your self-critical awareness, the more you build up your musical uniqueness.

So to cap what we have so far: We have two disposals to work with and build upon--the first dealing with concrete musical elements, the second dealing with how to combine these elements.

Relating the methods of combination to a melodic context Crispell continues with:

Beginning with a melodic line and varying it in any possible manner (transposition, retrograde, inversion, etc.); melodic lines made by clusters (iii); the importance of the shape of a line; modulation from one motif to another: can be abrupt/contrasting or continuous/evolving (iv).

(iii) The point made about "melodic lines made by clusters" is defined by the delimited meaning of "scale" that Crispell describes in the next point:

3. Use of scales created from harmonic blocks to form melodies (i.e., the possibility of seeing harmonic blocks as scale fragments)

Here, Crispell describes a scale as simply a chosen selection of notes. You can create another disposal (version of a scale) here if you'd like to have a preparation of different scales. Styles that we're used to listening to, Western styles, Eastern styles, have prepared disposals here that you can use, you know, like a C-major scale or a B-minor scale... Or you can create your own. My friend Kahl (Monticone) who plays guitar created his own scales that he finds helpful to select from when he prepares to improvise.

The concept of "creating scales from harmonic blocks" shows how scales can be a momentary grouping of notes within an actual improvisation (demonstration on piano). It's a reductive technique that you can break up harmonic blocks into single notes to work with, any harmonic block into any break up of notes. We're used to thinking about this the other way around, where harmonies are created out of predefined singular scale degrees.

For example, from a clusteral, serial-like harmonic approach a scale can be defined as emphasizing the lowest and highest notes of the cluster as dominants, and giving them greater accent. Then, notes in between them can be treated with a variety of dynamic degrees to differentiate their roles in your "scale" (demonstration on piano).

Personally, I find this way of discussing this approach very complicated and prefer not to think of anything as "scales," but prefer to think of it as different intensities of what's available at a given time that simply feel right to play.

(iv) while the differentiation between "abrupt/contrasting" and "continuous/evolving" may seem very obvious, you know, like a sharp, rhythmic attack (slams piano lid down) as opposed to a long-held sound, say, like the ambient whirring of the air conditioning in this room. So, even though this differentiation may seem very obvious, when the point is made in relation to what Crispell means by harmony, that is, from a perception aiming toward continuous sound and not from a systematic understanding of music, then the differentiation between these two kinds of approaches must be examined as both being contained within the continuous/evolving approach.

First, we'll look at the main features of these. It could be said that a contrasting approach has more elements of surprise, more intense and pronounced "stand-out" gestures, more amounts of different information or motives packed within shorter amounts of time. Rather than elaborating upon one motif over a period of time, perhaps ten different motifs are stated as gestures without development--you wouldn't even think of them as motifs.

This is generally saying: One fixed idea to another fixed idea without evolution from one to the next:

Figure 1: Contrasting/abrupt approach

An evolving approach, on the other hand, is developmental. Idea 1 to Idea 2 are merged through development from one to the next.

Figure 2: Continuous/evolving approach

The word "continuous" that Crispell uses in contrast to "abrupt/contrasting" does not mean that abrupt/contrasting should be understood as "discontinuous." In the process of improvising, it is very important that both approaches are understood in a continuous fashion.

Why? Here is where we begin to delve into notions of movement and energy in the process of acting out an improvisation; that even when you are playing sudden changes from one thing to another, they should be approached with an implicated feeling of continuity. It's that undefinable thing in music that we try to define as the "groove," the "flow," the "zone," or whatever, where you essentially merge with movement and accordingly operate upon continuously fluctuating degrees of energy flow.

We call this an "abstract" notion simply because this arena of operation, where movement continuously fluctuates, cannot be described as some measurement, in notes and staves, and we can only receive some kind of apprehension of it at the time of merging with it, and afterwards, in the impression that it leaves on us.

So what does it mean to have an abrupt/contrasting approach within a continuous approach? It means that, internally, you constantly force yourself into the field of movement so that you merge with it. You may be playing sudden changes from one thing to another, but you always approach these with an implicated continuity. So from the exterior, it may seem like a change of gestures are two separate discontinuous entities, but you make these two somehow connect via keeping a constant internal movement going.

Think of, say, a golfer swinging his nine-iron to hit a golf ball. The contact point between the club and the ball is just one element of a greater envelope that must be concentrated on throughout for the most effective hit. If this focus on the continuity of the stroke isn't made, then the golf ball isn't going to go anywhere.

But in order to make an improvisation work in such a way, it may help to consider what we're doing as dealing with energy fields in space where being able to perceive intervals separated from each other by attacking moments gives us the sensation of time. This is why Crispell, early in the article, stated: "Beginning with an interval (the most primal musical relationship)."

So in the field of action, we are generally saying that timing is everything. We're not talking about "tempo" or "keeping in time" as it's generally thought, or rather, we extend these concepts to include everything within them.

Okay, that's another abstract sounding comment that may make what I'm saying sound more complex than it actually is, so here's an example:

It's like driving a car. The speed at which you drive is never one set speed, say, if you're going eighty kilometres an hour, you're not actually going eighty kilometres an hour, but eighty kilometres an hour is a general level you try to keep to in accordance with the road rules and the other cars on the road. The car's speed is always fluctuating in very small degrees around this eighty kilometres an hour mark, slightly accelerating and slightly decelerating constantly--and if the car in front of you whacks on the brakes, without thinking, you also hit the brakes.

So, at some level, you're always in a state of acceleration and deceleration, this being a principle of movement. Whether you are playing upon a set tempo and you have a continuous focus upon the phrasing of a single line that accelerates and decelerates in timbral and dynamic degrees, or whether you are playing not upon a beats-per-minute base and the whole gamut of your material disposals are in an accelerating and decelerating flux--this is simply what is happening in movement, and being aware of it allows you to focus upon whatever lines of acceleration or deceleration you want to focus upon at any given time to enter into the "groove," or "zone," or whatever.

An explanation of timing given by martial artist Joe Maffei actually explains the fundamentals of a continuous, implicated approach to timing. He says (demonstrating each point as its being said):

a beat is any time you make contact

timing is the interval between contacts

rhythm is repeated contact

broken rhythm is the repeated starting and stopping of contact at irregular intervals

speed is nothing more than perfect timing and rhythm--the most economical motion and the right technique delivered at the right range

The examples of martial arts and driving a car relate to a survival instinct in us that forces people to maintain continuous awareness, either in a spar or on the road, for the best reaction time and effectiveness, or, the most "perfect speed" possible, according to Maffei.

We can see from Maffei's summary of aspects of our perception of time into speed how it explains the process of building up your material disposals--techniques of combination and development--in order to train ourselves for an instinctive flow where we aim for "perfect timing and rhythm." Where he states that speed is "the most economical motion and the right technique delivered at the right range," it simply means an approach to improvisation where a trained knowledge and technical base is only there to serve the performing situation, where your material junk piles are thrown into a momentary composition. Crispell describes this as follows:

The development of a motive should be done in a logical, organic way, not haphazardly (improvisation as spontaneous composition)--not, however, in a preconceived way--rather in a way based on intuition enriched with knowledge (from all the study, playing, listening, exposure to various musical styles, etc., that have occurred through a lifetime--including all life experiences); the result is a personal musical vocabulary

Here we can summarize the point about improvisation as being part of an equal blend with performance and composition. Practicing for such a situation involves a mixture of listening, reading, writing, analysis of recordings, analysis of scores, awareness of sound environments, technical practice both of compositional writing and of performance techniques, analysis of music both by theoretical reductions and by practical performing applications such as memorization and/or sight reading, experimenting in countless amounts of ways, and also--something very important if you want to actually perform--jamming with other musicians and setting up gigs once you feel ready.

I didn't delve into the full extent of what could be available for discussion on the material aspect to give a bit of room to discuss some of the movement aspects; and it's tough bringing the momentary aspects of improvisation into a descriptive form, but I spent some time on them because even though they may seem a bit confusing for now, I have found research into that area of practice a lot more helpful and fulfilling in terms of improvising than the material aspects. The end goal of improvisation, as with all music, is pleasure, receiving pleasure, and that law of diminishing returns related to our nature of receiving pleasure--where we constantly seek more pleasure, different pleasure, to what we have already, since the pleasure once received diminishes in value--has led us into this stage of coming up with all these sorts of ideas to receive pleasure from music. So enjoy!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Friday, October 2, 2009

We are off to Santa Barbara tonight to play at The Biko House w/ Railcars, Christmas, The Endless Bummer and Desolation Wilderness...we will be playing a set with our friend, Meagan. Hope traffic won't be as crazy and those UCSB kidz are all up for some partay!

Then tomorrow Eagle Rock (collab w/ peeps from Central Second) and Irvine (with Railcars, Tan Dollar and more...). Then The Smell (Railcars and more) on Sunday...wheweewee!

Also, the guy that lives on the studio part of the back of our house is a little whiny complainer and keps writing to our landlord who lives in Mississippi about really minute stuff. The guy can't just talk directly to us. We have decided to let him know what the word "NOISE" really means...we miss the guy that used to live there..good old Coogster...he made short films and is gonna be in the big time someday...and yes he had two bad-ass snakes too...

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

We will be doing a musical collaboration with our friends from The Transmissions and Death To Anders for the Pehrspace showcase at the Eagle Rock Music Festival. We will do a musical piece that is dictated by the colors of screen projections that Christian from The Transmissions prepared. We did a test run of it on Sunday just to see how it all flows. All the musicians playing were divided into three groups and assigned different colors -everyone only plays when they see their color appear onscreen. And they can play in response to whatever visuals was going on the screen. This turned out really great. The word "playing" music has never made so much sense.

AND...magick orchids will be playing with the aid of some friends in some upcoming shows and trying out different fun stuff (think of the musical equivalent to anal sex).

Here's a flyer for the Eagle Rock showcase:

Anyways, we will also be playing at UC Irvine at this same night. Its our 2nd night in supporting Railcars North American Tour Dates here in Southern CA. The night before that, we will be in Santa Barbara then on Sunday, we will be playing at the Smell.Then on the 9th of October, we hit the Echo Curio for Manhattan Murder Mystery' residency. Then another art show on the 10th with Halloween Swim Team and Michael Nhat. Feels like deva vu? Doesn't it?Well, for more updated info and updates on our tour dates with Railcars go and check out our myspace. We are so loaded with shows this month and to think, we were thinking of not playing any shows at all to focus on recordings but i guess Nancy Reagan was wrong... its just hard to say NO sometimes. But its all great and we will all have F-U-N!!!

We are also excited to announce that we will be releasing two new recordings soon.One of it is the one we recorded with Frank Moore at the Shaman's Den which is called "A Cloud Below And The Sea Above". Mikee Labash, who does most of Frank Moore's art for his zines/recordings/website is making the album cover and that is making us super excited.

The other recording we are releasing is of the house show we played at our home, The Malo Funhouse a month ago when we came back from our tour. It was a really great set and Josh Crampton's sax magick was superb. We are so happya bout it that we decided to release the recording and share it to y'all. Now the best part is that our friend, Adam Roth is doing the cover. Adam does really great illustrations and we are such admirers of his style. We are just happy to know and be friends with such creative and talented people.

Anyways, besides the impending sense of doom that is to unravel in 2012, thats something to look forward to.

And last but not the least, Champ has been doing videos lately with magick orchids music and many others. You can check it out on his youtube page if you have the time.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

LA Record reviews the show we played with Grandpire, Halloween Swim Team and Michael Nhat.

"Closing out the night were Magick Orchids, who gave a great performance that walked a fine line between experimental noise and sound collage. The band played with chaos and control, building immersive soundscapes that could be simultaneously beautiful and disorienting. Their use of saxophone and processed sounds to create an unusual fantasy environment made them the perfect closer for the surprisingly great Werewolf party. Here’s hoping they return to the 4300 Loft for another round of art and music again soon." (click here for the full review)

Big up goes to Meagan Boyd, Dylan Doren and Josh Crampton for being the bad asses that they are!

Monday, September 21, 2009

Last Friday's show for the Lots O' Crap Zine Fundraiser at The Bunny Ranch House was a blast. We had so much fun playing a "chilled-out" set. The cops came just after The Seizure and Manhattan Murder Mystery played but luckily they didn't stop the show. They just told us that if they got another complaint, they were gonna shut it down. We were happy they never came back. Josh did some awesome sax playing as always. Kid Infinity played a great fun set too, making sure things got bumping and moving. Afterward, there were lots of hanging out. Lots of drinking. Lots of smoking. Lots of talking. Lots of fun. Lots o' crap?

Saturday found us playing at The Werewolf Gallery art show at Jefferson Park. It was a pretty special night for us because of our line-up that night. Playing with the Orchids were our friends Meagan Boyd and Dylan Doren, who were both pretty bad ass playing drums and percussion in addition to the sounds and noises we make with Josh Crampton who was evoking some Peter Brotzmann-like sax work. It was great to play a different set that night and we are happy with how it turned out because we felt it reflected the urgency of the moment and it challenged the underlying expectations of people that go to the art shows and expect to be entertained. Michael Nhat and Halloween Swim Team also played some new songs that really rocked. HST's last song was total EPIC. You can tell those guys work so hard to develop their own sound. Michael Nhat wasn't feeling to good that night but still managed to make bodies move. There was a lot of interesting art that night. One in particular that i personally dug was the one with naked people with boxes on their heads -something about it just gave me a hard time to look away.

We wont be playing much shows in the next week. Gonna be working on some new recordings and video stuff. The next shows will be the shows we are playing in support for the Railcars tour here in Southwest CA. We have also been adding new stuff on the distro. Make sure to check it out, kidz!

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Last week, we went to the Arboretum for Rhea's birthday with our friends, Gabie, Michael and Liz, who took this really beautiful pic of us, You can check out more of the photos in her Flickr.

ART

To justify artist's professional, parasitic and elite status in society, he must demonstrate artist's indispensability and exclusiveness, he must demonstrate the dependability of audience upon him, he must demonstrate that no one but the artist can do art.

FLUXUS ART-AMUSEMENT

To establish artist's nonprofessional status in society, he must demonstrate artist's dispensability andinclusiveness, he must demonstrate the selfsufficiency of the audience, he must demonstrate that anything can be art and anyonecan do it.

Therefore, art must appear to be complex, pretentious, profound, serious, intellectual, inspired, skillful, significant, theatrical, It must appear to be caluable as commodity so as to provide the artist with an income. To raise its value (artist's income and patrons profit), art is made to appear rare, limited in quantity and therefore obtainable and accessible only to the social elite and institutions.

Therefore, art-amusement must be simple, amusing,upretentious,concerned with insignificances, requireno skill or countless rehearsals, have no commodityor institutional value.

The value of art-amusement must be lowered by makingit unlimited, massproduced, obtainable by all and eventuallyproduced by all.

Fluxus art-amusement is the rear-guard without anypretention or urge to participate in the competition of"one-upmanship" with the avant-garde. It strives forthe monostructural and nontheatrical qualities of simplenatural event, a game or a gag. It is the fusion of SpikesJones Vaudeville, gag, children's games and Duchamp.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

We are gonna be playing a Lots O Crap Zine Fundraiser on Friday at The Bunny Ranch then on Saturday, an artshow with Halloween Swim Team, Michael Nhat, Grandpire and more. Don't forget to check out the art! Yeah the kind that goes to the wall.. Ya know...

Been listening to a lot of cool shit lately made by people we know, bands we met, most of it are stuff that we recently got from friends, bands and whatnots for distro or just for listening purposes. We have been immersing ourselves in a lot of local stuff, fringe stuff, some stuff that the dominating mainstream culture could care less about...Anyways, if you have stuff that you need help distro and you think, we might dig it, please send it to us. PLEASE check the distro first and see what we are about...Yeah yeah yeah and don't give us all that nag about being open-minded just because we don't dig you sounding like your favorite band from the nineties.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

FINALLY, WE ARE WORKING ON NEW SHIT!!!

We are happy to announce that we have some new improv recordings/collaborations with Oliver Fritz Kurt Dammasch (deadART, DRD, Guppies, capital animal) and Mark Ryan Mata (artDamagaed, DRD, United States Of Imperfections, Sexy Cola).

We also have improv recordings/collaborations with our friend and artist, Meagan Boyd and other friends which we will have available soon.

Besides that, we are working on some audio-visual stuff and more recordings for another cassette and a 7" vinyl release.

There is also an interview/feature of us on the upcoming Lots O' Crap Zine No. 5.

Then, we have hella upcoming shows which you should check out on our myspace shmalface! which starts off with this weekend's Project Infest Music Fest at some warehouse in Downtown LA. Lots of experimental electronic noise bands. It starts early at 4PM. Be there and get a CD-R of the Malo Funhouse show we did last Saturday!

Thursday, September 3, 2009

LIVE STREAMING OF THE MALO FUNHOUSE SHOW CAN BE HEARD BY CLICKING ON THE IMAGE. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME WE WILL BE DOING THIS SO WE CAN'T ASSURE YOU A SMOOTH RIDE. HOWEVER, WE WILL TRY OUR BEST TO MAKE SURE, YOU GUYS GET THE JIZZ..OOPS! I MEANT GIST OF IT!

Monday, August 31, 2009

THIS SHOW WAS ORIGINALLY INTENDED AS OUR TOUR KICKOFF SHOW BUT DUE TO UNEXPECTED CIRCUMSTANCES, WE HAD TO RESCHEDULE IT. ANYWAYS, THIS NIGHT WILL ALSO BE A CELEBRATION OF RHEA's and OUR FRIEND, DAVE's BIRTH INTO THIS WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES, SO MAKE SURE TO SHOW THEM YOUR LUV THAT NIGHT. WE WILL ALSO BE LIVE STREAMING ONLINE -WE'LL ANNOUNCE MORE OF THE DETAILS ABOUT THAT LATER ON THE WEEK. TUNE IN.

“Dub offered the perfect score to the world’s deepening post-colonial dusk. Started, so legend goes, by Kingston's King Tubby in his studio on 18 Drumille Avenue, dub is basically this: a song sunk into the cavernous depths of a mixing board, stripped of its secure pop substances, and returned to the world as an electrified monster or vampire. (It's no accident that vampires appear on the covers of numerous dub LPs.) With dub, what was once flesh and bone is transformed into vague melodies that suddenly appear and vanish, moans that rise and recede, and bass lines that move through the echo-haze like phantoms in a haunted house.Dub is the "ghost dimension" of the real pop song; there is no body in dub, just a flickering afterimage of what was once a body.” (Charles Mudede)